Who is Keyser Söze?

He’s supposedly the shadow arch-criminal behind the crime world, according to the film The Usual Suspects. In this completely NSFW video, you can get a 5 minute overview of who he is and why he’s so special, which I’ll sum up for you here as a reminder if you’ve seen the movie, or would rather not hear the curse words:

… to be in power, you don’t need guns, money, or even numbers. You just need the will to do what the other guy won’t.

Paraphrased for style reasons, but that’s the general gist of it.

Because of this man’s incredible will, he was able to gain power, and stay in power of his entire industry, in this case, the criminal world.

He couldn’t be betrayed, because he had no people. Everyone worked for him, yet no one knew it.

He couldn’t be overthrown, because though he led a comfortable life in plain sight, free of celebrity, no one knew who he was, despite his far-reaching influence and power.

Now, assuming you’re a fairly un-evil human based life form, why would you want to be this guy?

Why would You Want to be Keyser Söze?

Let’s take the evil out of him for the rest of this scenario. And let’s just paint him with the rest of his colors:

• he controls everything that happens in his part of the world
• he can have incredible publicity without any of the nuisances of celebrity
• his source of money is unlimited because his source of labor and resources are unlimited

If he wasn’t backne on the supple teenaged body of humanity, wouldn’t you want to be him?

Influential, powerful, with far-reaching, if not unlimited resources?

I’ve seen this movie dozens of times. And each time I’m left pondering what the secret of being Keyser Söze is.

Yes, he had the will to do some horrible things that I hope I never even hear of someone doing in real life. But I’m not interested in that.

I’m interested in why.

Why did he have that will?

The answer I believe, after many moons of pondering is this:

Keyser Söze is a Master of His Ego.

Again, I don’t advocate violence or becoming a crime boss, obviously. Within the context of the story though, I admit to a sick fascination with his ability to not just figuratively but literally kill his identity in order to rise to power.

He had to be completely comfortable living in the shadow of his own legend. He had to be happy to be unknown, or worse yet, known as his alias, a non-threatening, less-than-intelligent person, smart enough to be a con man, but dumb enough to keep getting caught.

By shifting any fame that came his way to others, he dominated his universe.

I believe that’s how you become Keyser Söze, and rule the world of your choosing.

Now, what does that have to do with free traffic, social media, or marketing?

I’ve written about ego and ego boundaries before.

What I haven’t talked about is how I’ve observed the relative success of people who have conscious control over their egos, as compared to those who have a vague idea of ego in only its most stereotypical manifestation.

In my travels, I’ve come to know some famous and powerful people. (That doesn’t make me important or interesting, trust me. I was just trained not to give importance to celebrity, which made me an annoying curiosity to people who are used to being worshiped. I wouldn’t even tell you if it weren’t directly relevant to this discussion.)

The pertinent thing about that is that this has often afforded me the chance to inspect power and fame close up – not often but more than other people. Two things dawned on me by the time I met my third famous person in my mid-20s.

First – I never, EVER, want to be famous. For the most part, it’s just a huge pain. If destiny brings me fame, I’d like it to be in certain tight circles only, like literary fame, as a screenwriter, novelist, playwright. Even as a director would be fine. But as a model, reality TV star, singer, or actor?

Pass.

However, I have noticed that power and money come in handy. Which makes me wonder why sometimes people with the same opportunities don’t end up in the same place.

And that led to B- people who understand what ego really is, are more successful at the same game than their counterparts by a factor of ten. Those people trained themselves to get out of their own way and give most of the credit to the people who make them who they are.

It’s not out of trying to be humble, or modest. Not at all. Giving away the credit that is due to you is just an inverted ego, it’s not the lack of one, contrary to popular belief – you gain an inflated sense of self-worth by being seen as a better person.

No, these people are much smarter than that. They’ve somehow learned how to make who gets the credit for something genuinely not important to them, as long as they are compensated for what they bring to the table, and complete whatever mission they are on.

It is a rare and beautiful thing. And, I believe, the key to ruling your niche.

It’s also very tricky, because you don’t want to have other people thinking you’re functionally useless, or why would they pay you to do anything?

On the other hand, knowing how to spread appreciation and kudos to the people around you in proper proportion, makes the people around you not just more loyal, but fiercely so – some say even more than money. It makes you not just more influential, but able to cash in favors of nearly any magnitude on a moment’s notice.

It’s not a skill I’ve yet mastered. But I’ll tell you this.

Try it for a week, and you won’t go back. People are hungry to be recognized, but if you can quell that hunger in yourself, and feed others as they deserve it, it’s amazing what you can accomplish.

A cryptic tip, I know. Give it a shot. Just… don’t become an  actual crime overlord, please?

So a week ago, I started out with intention of doing a series on Social Currencies. Then I realized that depending on your perspective, the way I wanted to talk about Social Currency didn’t really work.

This concept of currency within the economy of social interaction is really a much smaller concept within a book I’m writing about how small businesses gain the upper hand online through the leverage of resources.

But I digress. Here’s the point.

Before we can start talking about social currency we have to discuss what exactly is.

A currency is the prevalent item or unit that can be taken universally by anybody in a given economy for goods or services, in that same economy.

That is  an acceptable definition but first to apply it here we must agree that we have a social economy, meaning that we have a structure where, things of value are being exchanged, whether for personal use or for business.

So. for example, I could give you my trust. Until I give that trust to you, even in a limited capacity, I won’t give your business my email address unless I’m a fool, or I fully trust the laws that protect me if you abuse it.

In return for my trust, I have to get something back that is worth not just the risk of getting burned by you or a third party that hacks your server, but the act of opening a line of communication itself.

Another definition of currency is any form of value exchange that can be circulated within an agreed economy. In order for one to get another unit of value back, I offer a unit of value.

Of course, in a value exchange it’s all about the perception of value. Money itself isn’t static.

Even though were not on the gold standard anymore we do have comparisons between different countries and economies as far as what a certain currency’s value is here. The value of the dollar against other world currencies is different than it was ten days ago, ten years ago even, and not the same as it will be in ten years.

So this is also an accepted definition for our purposes, given that what we’re trying to do is to get relative value.

I may give you a technique for increasing your visitors that brings you $1350 worth of traffic, for $100 because I know the relative value of you learning it yourself versus paying me to do it.

Or maybe having you as a future lead is worth a loss of $1250 in potential revenue to me, perhaps I value you as a client over a lifetime at least that much.

Relative value.

Next, we’re going to talk about the criteria I measured each component of social currency against in order to determine their usefulness to you as a business person. Then we’ll jump right into the series with an overview of the first social currency.

Our blog is back up. Thank you to our super-hero Web Host who has saved the day once again, just like the Powerpuff Girls.

I’m so sleepy. Almost as sleepy as I was when I wrote this message that you guys keeping pinging me about. Stop laughing at me!

Ok, laugh at me. It is Friday, after all.

In today’s Social Media Issue:

• The First New Traffic Test in a Year
• Our New Facebook Group
• Where to Get Free Help with Linked In
• A Social Media Whitepaper from Jeremiah Owyang
• Another Social Media Whitepaper from MotiveLabs
• Add Us to Google
• Links to 69 Articles on Web Traffic
• The Traffic Methods Series #229 – 239

Whew! Are you as pooped reading it as I was writing it?

Read it here.

I already have an update planned for the Facebook (Un)marketing release that came out on Thursday (you still have about an hour to act before I start cleaning up the sales page and raising the price to retail.)

From earlier tonight to the next 36 hours or so, if you’ve been a client of mine in the past, you’ll be getting a notice telling you what list to join for free updates of my products and special client freebies.

They’re for clients only and I’m emailing you the initial notices out one at a time. After tonight if you want an update, you’ll have to be on one of the lists – manual updates are just too time consuming. We’re talking several thousand emails here.

This includes PDF, audio and video updates to The Blog Optimization Package, Free Traffic Tips, the book, the 2007 versions of any of the guides from the 2006 version of the Get Them All Special, Blogs that Sell, The Art of Speed Blogging and Hidden Google traffic tactics.

High Profile Article Marketing and Marketing Success with RSS are legacy products that will only be available as part of larger packages.

If you have resale rights to any of my products, make sure you’ve joined the list from the original package — this gives you a good reason to contact former clients to say hello and remind them that you can help them!

That’s right. We changed the template again.

Okay, I, Tinu, control-freak extraordinaire, led the changing of the theme. It was me. ARE YOU HAPPY?

Sorry. Skipped my wheaties again.

Anyway, it seems that after a long search, I’ve found the three column, widget-ready, lightweight, professional theme with shades of blue in it that I’ve been yearning for, lo these many couple of days. I’m going to ask Nina to make our professional WordPress template based on this one, with our narrow columns all on the right.

We’ll be bringing back missing features like MyBlogLog, the DoFollow notices, and BUMPzee over the next few days.

It was hard to break the tie between what we had during our Cutline design change, the three-right-column version of same, and this one, but in the end, blue always wins out over right-column bliss.

Though I have to say that on my newest blog about money, the Cutline three-right-columns version wins hands down, I just have to make all the header graphics.

So, what do you think of the design change? Can you see everything okay?